design – Wellyssa's Womb

Water feature?

I’ve been designing elemental gardens at the edges of the main sacred space, between the Dragons. I’ve been having trouble figuring out what to do for water. What I want is a shallow fountain that will continually circulate water and mist it downward from a trellis-like support above. I’m still trying to talk my husband into that idea.

I set up some temporary bird baths to bring water to the area instead. Then I noticed that the city was cutting down a large dead cottonwood tree at the end of the block. So I asked Jester (who’s time I paid for) and my fired Don to come over and help me get enough log segments out of the ditch under the tree to make a better display in the water feature.

We dug holes to stand the logs in, according to the individual size of each log, added some gravel for drainage and tucked in the logs.

Don and Jester unloading the logs and setting them in the holes

cutting to size and cutting off the pockey parts

I filled a set of fancy matching pots that I have been saving for the right project with spring bulbs, and then tucked them inside of some larger black plastic pots, adding mulch for insulation between the pots.

Stumps in the ground, pots filled with bulbs, waiting for spring.

The fancy pots will get dug out of the bigger pots and placed on top of the logs. Their flowers reaching upwards and green vines hanging down mimicking water flow. we’ll have to see what it looks like.

After the bulbs faded, I replaced them with annuals. (2016)

In the Beginning . . . East to North

A tour of the landscape, 2005, from east, around the back and ending in the north. Cause you always move east to north, which is why the house faces east, but that’s another conversation entirely.

The Spruce tree to the right of the picture is about 8 feet tall, 2″caliber. It was all Brian and I could do to get it out of the truck , roll it across the ground and get it into the hole we dug for it. Not to mention the fact that all the “dirt/soil” on this property is really clay, with layers of gravel, because there used to be a road through the south side of the property, with additional layers of this heavy dark brown clay, that is literally impenetrable with anything but an industrial auger. Seriously, if you’re spending time looking at future pictures of this garden, I want you to appreciate the effort it took to dig each and every hole! Seriously! Appreciate me!

The tree to the left is a catalpa. Seriously expensive! We bought 2 of them, same size, from Paulino Garden’s in 32 gallon buckets. We looked all over town for catalpas, and Paulinos was the only place that had them – so we splurged. They were so heavy that they had to be professionally delivered. Lots of prayers were given to those two trees.

Moving around to the south side, we put in three Red Maples, in between the berms, in two different varieties. I wanted to have a wall of fire! on the south side of the property. They were certainly beautiful, for about 3 years. More on that later.

Oh, and the berms: our neighbor to the west, Roy, owned an excavation business. He brought in 110 semi-truck loads of fill dirt for us, (YES One hundred and Ten) dumped it and shaped it into berms with his skid-steer. I wish I had a video of Roy on the skid-steer, he was an expert and a bit of a dare devil. He did the dirt work for us in exchange for 6000 sq.ft. of our property in the far west end. There used to be an odd triangle piece of land that extended from the back of the property, and towards his property, along the fence boundary of the property directly behind us to the north (Jason and Amy). I had been pondering what we were going to do with it, because it was very exposed, and anytime I walked that pie-shaped slice of land, I felt like I was invading my neighbors yard. So it worked out perfectly to sign over that portion of the lot to him, in exchange for $1000’s of dollars worth of dirt. Just one of the many serendipitous events that have come our way.

Also, on the south side is the beginnings of the willow garden. The large light green shrubs are actually the only native plants to be found on this property, other than weeds. Ap-parently, there had once been an irrigation pipe that ran diagonally under our property from the reservoir at the north/west end of the neighborhood, across town for several miles to a farm. While the farm was active, the willows apparently tapped into the pipe and were able to grow here, in this desolate, dry place.

Since they were the only native thing growing here, I decided to keep them and make a garden around them to honor their tenacity and the land spirits. The buckets are holding space for additional shrubs yet to be purchased and/or planted. (Something I did to help me plan how many plants i needed.)

After the south Maples and berms were installed, I brought home some tree cuttings to make seating for a fire pit. This was the first sacred space to be created in the garden. I found the log cuttings piled on the sidewalk in someone’s front yard. I knocked on the door and asked if I could have them, and they were only too happy to help me load them up.

Moving to the west: the west boundary of our property is 350 feet from the back door, so it’s a ways out there.

Looking west you can see the straight lines of green things growing, weeds. These are the drainage lines of the leech field, the tank covers can be seen in the foreground. We built the herb garden over the tank covers to hide them. You can see this process in the next post – In the Beginning . . . Herb Garden.

Looking West. (west berm not in place yet)

Making our way to the north side, we are still in the process of bringing in fill dirt and shaping berms.

We planted birch and oak trees this first year. The tree in the 25 gallon green bucket is a red oak. We purchased most of our trees in this size, because Brian and I could move and plant them ourselves.

The womb of the earth. This is one of the most sacred objects in the garden. I found this piece of wood at the tree yard where I purchased the log for my story pole. It was a focal point in our Aurora Garden as well. (Sorry no pictures, we didn’t have a digital camera till 2004, and I’m too lazy to dig out old photos and copy them and digitize them . . . ) Anyway, I placed the womb up against the north berm.

I knew this installation would evolve over time as the garden developed, and I had not yet made the determination as to how the Womb of the Earth area would be completed, i just knew she would be in the north, in the center.

A view of the back of the house. I look back at our two patio chairs, being held down by cinder blocks, sitting in front of our portable fire pit, and I have to laugh. How pathetic it looks. But we sat out there after dark, this first year, admiring the beautiful view of the night stars. (You can’t star gaze in the back yard now, there’s too much light contamination from all the construction that’s been done near I25 to the west of us.) Sigh.

All these plants (in buckets next to the house) were taken from our house in Aurora. There are still about that many left at my friend Jackie’s house. When we moved I dug up and/or divided almost every plant I had in that first garden, potted them up and over-wintered them in Jackie’s back yard. These are the beginnings of the butterfly garden and the herb garden.

Continuing to the farthest north/east corner of the property you can see the other 8′ Spruce. She is the partner of the one on the south side. According to Feng Shui, it is auspicious to balance the energies surrounding one’s home. She is placed exactly the same distance from the house and from the street as her partner to the south. It was interesting that both of these trees were purchased at the same time from a tree lot on south Sante Fe, that was going out of business. They are both blue spruces.

However, the one in the south/ east is much more scraggly shaped, and much more green, and much leaner looking than the one in the north. At the time they were planted, they both looked exactly the same. It took a good 5 years for them to identify themselves, and their gender. They both have their own unique energy, and Bless the Gods! I somehow got them in the right location, the male tree in the south/east and the female tree in the north/east. I love how even when I don’t have everything figured out, I can count on my guides, or the land spirits to make sure everything gets placed where it needs to be.

On another note, I remember one of our neighbors shaking her head at us, as she walked by the day we were planting these two spruces. I asked her what she thought was so humorous. She said: “Look at you two, with the tape measure and everything. It’s just a tree, plant it! And besides, it should be closer to the house.” I walked her over to the tree we were planting and explained the appropriate distance from the house and the driveway for planting this spruce. I explained to her that this tree will be 25-30 feet in diameter at the bottom once it’s mature, so therefore it needs to be at least 20′ from the house, to make room for a walkway between the tree and the north side of the house. She just looked at me like I was crazy. WELL! she doesn’t live here anymore, and 3 of the trees she planted in her yard were torn out, because they were encroaching on the garage. Sometimes, I just want to slap people! I much prefer the company of plants.

In the Beginning . . . we need a driveway!

We purchased our home in Brighton 12-30-2004. I couldn’t wait for spring so I could get started with building my garden. It took 6 months to build the house (Morrison Homes in case anyone cares – they were great to work with). And during that time I generated an initial garden plan. I had it mapped out in my mind, and on paper, what I wanted to do with the space, what would go in the east, south, west and north of the garden, where the driveway would be, what would be lawn, what would be garden, where the largest anchoring trees would go, and how the boundaries would be marked and warded.

The plan has changed some as time has passed, but the basic bones of the plan remain in tact. Time, money, nature and happenstance all come to the drawing board. So here we go, from the ground up!

Brian had the time of his life playing with all the heavy equipment we had to bring in to do the initial land shaping. He leveled and shaped the area which would be the 1/2 moon driveway, and cleared and screened the areas to the north and south of what would be the lawn area.

Next the driveway was designed and laid out by Brian. The dimensions were determined by me to be in multiples of 4′. 4 is the numerological identity of the property, so as much as is possible, everything in the design is based around the number 4. Thus, the driveway is 12′ wide at the tight ends where it meets the culverts, and 24′ wide at the widest part where it opens up to the garages.

The framing was laid out and the concrete poured. The builder is only required to pour a parking pad (concrete directly in front of the garages) and a narrow path from the driveway to the steps leading up to the front door. In our case, this created a narrow, and very sharp corner to navigate; not to mention – ugly, bad feng shui, non-functional future landscaping.

Connecting the driveway to the front steps

I could go on. I drive around the neighborhood and see soo many of my neighbors who’s houses still have this original, contractor limited design. Shudder.

Added the curved section of concrete to gracefully connect the driveway with the front steps.

Over time, we laid down 90 tons of gravel aggregate in the driveway to compact and stabilize the soil.

Vegetable Garden

In early spring of 2014 I decided to take on vegetable gardening. I was really scared I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to grow vegetables. It all seemed very daunting. And there was this weird sense of responsibility. Like, what if all the seeds died? I killed food? It’s one thing to kill a flower, but to kill food?

digging the foundation trench, and adding gravel

Adding weed barrier for what will be the walkway between the herb garden and the vege raised beds

Food plants are special. They hold the energy of life in them in a different way from flowers, or shrubs and trees. I could feel that energy when I went to the store to buy the seeds, and held the seed package in my hands. “Plant me,” they said, “I will feed you.”

First row installed. the hose sticking out the end is actually irrigation pipe, which is being laid into the beds as they are built

While we were building the vegetable beds, I was organizing the seeds, reading my books and figuring out which seeds want to be planted next to which other seeds. When to plant the seeds, how deep to plant the seeds, how far apart. OMG – this seems really complicated!

Meanwhile, Brian and Jester are busy doing the hard work of drilling holes in the bed joints, all the way down to the ground, and then securing the joint with clamps and pounding the 3/8″ rebar through the holes and 12″ into the ground below. The boxes are made with 3 levels high of 6×6 cedar. These walls are NOT going to move.

Brian, making sure everything is level and plum

Brian and Jester clamping and pounding in the rebar.

Finished beds.

I had to post this picture of Brian. I saw him standing there taking a break and nearly fell over laughing. So I made him pose for a picture. He’s now my official garden gnome.

Filling the beds was back breaking work. 6 pickup truck loads of soil for each of the three beds. I did one bed per day.

first seedlings sprouting – soo excited!

I was both excited and scared to death when the first seedlings popped up. They’re growing! they’re actually growing! Believe it or not, I have never grown anything from a seed. I buy all my plants from the store, or get them from a friend, already growing in pots. So this whole vegetable garden thing took all my courage. What was I going to tell my husband if I couldn’t figure out how to grow vegetables after all the work he and Jester put into building this glorious garden?!? And how could I consider myself a gardener if I couldn’t grow something from seed? My whole gardening persona was on the line. But after much helicoptering, blessings, chanting, finger crossing, covering and uncovering the seedlings through the early frost period (up through May), they actually grew.